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Africa Floods Bring Death, Devastation
In eastern Uganda, nine people have been reported killed and 150,000 have been made homeless since early August. Another 400,000 - mainly subsistence farmers - have lost their livelihoods after their fields were flooded or roads washed away and the rains are forecast to worsen in the next month. "The problem is getting worse by the hour," said Uganda's Minister for Relief and Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru, who spent Saturday viewing the affected areas by plane. "Access to some communities is almost impossible. We will need boats and helicopters to deliver emergency interventions," he added. "In some places, the water is the same color as the earth so when you look at it you think it is a field then you realize it's water," Ecweru said. On the other side of the continent, Ghana in west Africa has also been heavily hit. Three regions in the north, the country's traditional breadbasket, have been declared an official disaster zone after whole towns and villages were submerged. Torrential rains between July and August killed at least 18 persons and displaced a quarter of a million, Information Minister Oboshie-Sai Cofie said Saturday. "It is a humanitarian disaster. People have nowhere to go. Some of them are just hanging out there waiting for help to come at a point," Cofie said. The Ghanian government had received considerable aid, she said. More than a million people across at least 17 countries have been affected, said Elisabeth Byrs of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Posted by: Steve White 2007-09-17 |
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